stand clear of the closing doors

Mysterious Subway People Not Going to Hogwarts After All

On The G Train between Brooklyn and Queens.
Photo: The All-Nite Images/flickr

New York transit Twitter was all aflutter today with the fascinating story of two women who riders saw climb out through a secret door in the G train, apparently only to disappear into the darkness of the tunnel. As one witness put it, “That’s some Harry Potter shit.” The incident had subway riders buzzing about what secret passages and portals might lay beneath our fine city, so I did some research and put forth a theory that was confirmed by an MTA spokesperson. Spoiler: What really happened is kiiiinda boring.

Here’s what G train riders say they witnessed last night:

I dug through this official MTA report of the G line from 2013 and found that tower operators — the MTA employees who operate the “traffic-control and mechanical interlocking machines” that make sure the trains don’t crash into each other — have a field office located at the Bedford-Nostrand stop, right where last night’s passengers saw the women climb off the train.

So I ran the following theory by MTA and NYC Transit spokesman Kevin Ortiz: Instead of witnessing two women passing through a wormhole between G train stops and into another dimension, riders witnessed two tower operators being dropped off at the MTA field office between the Myrtle-Willoughby and Bedford-Nostrand stops. Ortiz wrote back, “You would be correct.”

Unfortunately, this explanation is way more boring than “Harry Potter shit,” and I admit that by placing this rational theory in the hands of the MTA, they may be using me as a pawn to convince riders that the subway does not have its own Platform 9 3/4. It’s truly impossible to know. After all, if you can witness these miracles underground, surely anything can happen in the New York City subway.

Mysterious Subway People Not Going to Hogwarts